The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall: or, Great Days in School and Out

CHAPTER XVIII
KICKING THE PIGSKIN

Letters kept coming every week to the Rushton boys from the family at home. Mr. Rushton’s, although less frequent than his wife’s, were always bright and jolly, and seldom came without enclosing a check, which helped to cover the cost of many a midnight spread in the dormitory, when the boys were supposed to be in bed. Their friends were a unit in declaring that Mr. Rushton was a “real sport.”

Those of Mrs. Rushton came oftener, and were full of loving expressions and anxious advice to wear proper clothing and avoid rough sports and be careful about getting their feet wet. Although her chicks were no longer under her maternal wings, she brooded over them every moment, and was counting the days till they returned to her.

She often referred to Uncle Aaron, and the boys were sorry to learn that there was still no trace of the missing watch and papers. He had offered a reward and advertised widely, but had never received even a hint of their whereabouts.

“Old Hi Vickers is a swell detective–I don’t think,” sighed Teddy, after reading the latest letter.

“I blame myself, partly, for the loss of the watch,” remarked Fred regretfully. “I ought to have told somebody right away about those tramps hanging around. Then they might have been rounded up and chased out of town before they had a chance to break into the store.”

“You’re not to blame for anything,” said Teddy bitterly. “I’m the person that caused all the trouble. If I’d only had sense enough not to plug Jed’s horse that day, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. If a prize were offered for ivory domes, I’d win it, sure.”

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these–it might have been,”

quoted Tom Eldridge, who usually had something pat in the poetical line for all occasions.

“Lay off on the spouting stuff, Tom,” said Ned Wayland, “and you fellows stop your grizzling and come down to the football field. It’s a dandy afternoon for practice.”

It was a wonderful October day, with a crisp breeze coming from the lake that moderated the warmth of the sun, and the boys were stirred by the thrill of youth and life that ran through every vein.

It was too much for Tom, despite the sarcasm with which his previous effort had been greeted, and he burst out:

“There is that nameless splendor everywhere,

That wild exhilaration in the air – ”

He dodged a pass that Ned made at him.

“Let me alone,” he chortled. “Don’t you see that I can’t help it?”

“The lyric joys that in me throng,

Seek to express themselves in song.”

The other lads gave it up.

“A hopeless case,” murmured Ned, shaking his head sadly.

“Yes,” mourned Fred. “And he used to be such a nice fellow, too, before he went bughouse.”

“You rough necks are jealous,” grinned Tom. “You’d have tried to discourage Shakespeare, if you’d been living then.

“Lucky for the world, you weren’t living then,” he went on. “For that matter you’re not living now. You’re dead ones, but you don’t know it.”

They were still trying to think up a sufficiently cutting response when they came in sight of the football field.

It was an animated scene. A dozen or more boys in their football togs were running over the field, while many more crowded round the side lines as spectators. There was a dummy, at which some of the players were throwing themselves in turn to get tackling practice. Others were running down under punts, and still others were getting instructions in the forward pass.

The game with the Lake Forest School, one of their principal rivals, was now only two weeks off, and the boys were working for dear life to get into form. They had a good team, although three of their best players of the year before had not returned to school this fall.

Teddy was a little too light for the heavy work required in football, although he would have made a good quarter-back, where quickness is more necessary than weight. But that position was already filled by Billy Burton, who was doing capital work, so that there seemed no opening for Teddy. He consoled himself by the determination to make the shortstop position on the baseball team the following spring.

But Fred was husky enough to fill any position, either in the line or the back field, and he had been picked out by Melvin Granger as a “comer.”

Melvin was the captain of the team and played centre. He was always on the lookout for any one who could strengthen the team, and had promptly spotted Fred as first-class material.

“Ever play football?” he had asked him, the day after his arrival at Rally Hall.

“A little,” answered Fred modestly. He was averse to boasting and did not add, as he might have done truthfully, that he had been, far and away, the best player in his school league.

“What position have you played?” asked Melvin, interested at once.

“Oh, I’ve played left end and right tackle at different times, but I’ve had more experience at fullback than anywhere else.”

“Great!” exclaimed Melvin. “Welcome to our fair city. We’ve got a lot of good players for almost every other position on the team, and, if one gets hurt, we don’t have much trouble in finding a substitute from the scrubs, which is almost as good as the regular. But in the fullback job there’s only one first-class fellow, and that’s Tom Eldridge, who’s playing it now. Tom’s a dandy, but he might get hurt at any time, and we’d have hard work to find any one who could fill his shoes.

“Of course,” he went on, “there isn’t any vacancy now, and the boys who have been here longest will be given first chance. But, to hold his position, he’ll have to prove that no one of the new fellows is better than he is. You won’t mind playing on the scrubs at the start, will you?”

“Not a bit,” answered Fred stoutly. “I’ll go in there and work my head off just the same as if I were on the regular team.”

“That’s the talk,” cried Melvin. “That’s the spirit I like to see. And I can see right now that Tom will have all he wants to do to hold his job.”

So Fred had gone in on the scrub. There had not been as much chance for practice as usual, as there had been an unusually large number of rainy days that fall, but already he had loomed up as by far the best player among the substitutes. He was right in line for promotion.

And this afternoon his chance came, sooner than he had expected.

The playing had been unusually spirited, and the scrubs had been giving the regulars all they could do to hold their own. At last, however, the first team had got the ball down within ten feet of their opponents’ line, and the ball had been passed to Tom Eldridge for one determined attempt to “get it over.”

The scrubs braced savagely, but Tom came plunging in like a locomotive. There was a wild mix-up as his adversaries piled up on him, and when the mass was untangled, Tom lay on the ground with a badly sprained ankle. He tried to rise, but sank back with a groan.

They lifted him up, and he stood on one foot, with his arms on their shoulders. Professor Raymond, who had the oversight of athletic sports, came hurrying up and examined the injury. All were immensely relieved when they learned that there were no bones broken, but became grave again when the professor said that the sprain was a bad one and would probably lay Tom up for a couple of weeks.

“Just before the Lake Forest game, too!” exclaimed Ned Wayland. “I tell you, it’s tough.”

“We’re goners now!” moaned Slim Haley.

“Not by a jugful,” put in Tom, between whom and Fred the rivalry had been of the most generous kind. “I never saw the day when I could play better football than Fred Rushton. He’ll play the position to the queen’s taste.”

“Nonsense,” said Fred. “You can put it all over me, Tom. I’m awfully sorry you got hurt.”

Professor Raymond insisted that Tom should be carried at once to the school, where he could have his injured ankle attended to properly. The boys cheered the lad as he was taken away, and then Granger turned to Fred.

“You take his place, Fred,” he said, “and show these fellows from Missouri what you can do.”

And Fred showed them. He was a little nervous at first as he felt all eyes following him, but, in the excitement of the game, this wore off, and he played like a fiend. He was here, there and everywhere, dodging, twisting, running like a deer, bucking the line with a force that would not be denied. Twice he carried the ball over the line for a touchdown, and before his onslaughts the scrubs crumpled up like paper. It was some of the finest playing that Rally Hall had ever seen, and when the game was ended, he was greeted with a tempest of cheers. He had “made good” beyond a doubt.

“Fred, you played like a wild man!” said Melvin, as they were walking back to the Hall after the game. “You’re all to the mustard. Keep it up and we’ll lick Lake Forest out of their boots!”

CHAPTER XIX
THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

A few days later Teddy came rushing up to Fred on the campus, his face aglow with excitement.

“Say, Fred,” he gasped, “I saw one of them to-day!”

“One of whom?” asked Fred.

“The tramps that looted Cy Brigg’s store,” responded Teddy.

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Fred, catching his brother’s excitement. “Are you sure? Where did you see him? How do you know he was one of them?”

“By the scar on his face,” answered Teddy. “You remember the tall one who looked as if some one had stabbed him up near the temple? I’m sure he’s the same one we saw in Sam Perkins’ barn.”

“Wasn’t the other fellow with him?” asked Fred.

“No, he was all alone this time. I was coming up from the post office with Lester Lee when I caught sight of him near the railroad track. He looked tough and slouchy, but not as ragged as when we first saw him.”

“Yes,” interrupted Fred, “he’s had money since then.”

“I thought there was something about him that reminded me of some one,” went on Teddy, “but it wasn’t till after I’d passed him that it came over me who he was. Then I turned around to go after him, with the idea of having him arrested. But he had just gone over the tracks in front of a freight train. The train was a long one and we had to wait several minutes on this side before it got by. Then it was too late. We hunted all over, but couldn’t see anything of him.”

“That was hard luck,” said Fred regretfully.

“Of course,” resumed Teddy, “he wasn’t trying to get away, because he’d never seen me before, and didn’t know that I’d ever seen him. He must have turned a corner somewhere and then melted out of sight. Maybe I wasn’t sore! Think what a satisfaction it would be to telegraph to Uncle Aaron that we’d got the fellow who stole his watch.”

“It’s certainly tough,” assented Fred, “to come so close to him and just miss getting him. I’ll ’phone down right away to the constable at Green Haven, and tell him to be on the lookout for the fellow.”

“Tell him there’s a reward out for him,” suggested Teddy. “That’ll make him keep his eye peeled.”

Fred telephoned at once, and received the assurance that the fellow would be arrested if found, and held as a suspicious character until the Oldtown authorities could send for him.

And the next day, the boys themselves, together with a number of their friends, spent all their spare time searching in that part of the town where the tramp had disappeared.

“It’s no use, I guess,” remarked Fred at last, as they turned back from the outskirts of the town. “He may be miles away by this time.”

“Getting ready to break into some other store, perhaps,” suggested Teddy. “The loot he got in Oldtown won’t last him forever.”

“There’s a pretty tough looking customer going down that lane,” exclaimed Bill Garwood, as they came to a corner in a poor part of the town.

The boys followed his glance and saw a tall, roughly dressed man slouching along a hundred yards away and making toward the open country. He was alone and seemed to be in no hurry.

“It’s the same fellow we saw yesterday,” said Teddy excitedly. “I’m sure of it. How about it, Lester?”

“It surely looks like him,” replied Lester Lee. “The same walk and the same clothes and–yes, the same face,” as the man gave a careless look behind him.

“You get down to the constable’s office, quick, Teddy,” directed Fred. “Run every step of the way. Tell him we’ve got this fellow located. We’ll try to keep him in sight until you get back. Hustle.”

Teddy was off like a shot.

But the tramp seemed to know that something was in the air. He looked around again and then quickened his pace. The boys, too, walked faster, and, noting this with another backward glance, the man in front made certain that they were following him with a purpose. What that purpose was he did not know, but his guilty conscience told him that it might be for any one of half a dozen offences.

At the first corner he turned sharply, and when the boys reached it, they saw him loping along at a pace that carried him rapidly over the ground. The houses had thinned out, and there was no one to intercept him as he made for the woods that lay a little way ahead.

“Oh, if Teddy were here with the constable,” exclaimed Fred, in an agony of apprehension, as he saw the prey escaping.

They all broke into a run, and, as they were younger and fleeter, they were soon at the fellow’s heels. His whiskey sodden body could not keep up the pace, and as they neared him, he stopped running and turned about savagely.

“What are you fellows chasing me for?” he snarled, a dangerous light in his eyes.

“What are you running away for?” countered Fred.

“None of yer business,” the fellow growled. “Now you git, or I’ll split yer heads,” he snapped as he drew an ugly looking blackjack from his pocket.

For an instant the boys hesitated. Then Fred had an inspiration.

“That’s the man, Constable,” he cried, looking over the fellow’s shoulder. “Nab him.”

The man turned in alarm to see who was behind him, and at the same instant Fred dived for his legs in a flying tackle that brought him to the ground. It was a splendid tackle, but the man was big and heavy, and, as they struck the ground, his knee drove into Fred’s chest and knocked the breath out of him.

In another second, the other boys could have launched themselves upon the tramp, and their united strength would have been able to hold him down until the arrival of the officer. This had been Fred’s idea when he had made the tackle. But his mind worked so much more quickly and his action had been so swift, that they did not at once grasp the situation. And when they did, it was too late.

The tramp, desperate now, got on his feet and rushed at them with his blackjack. Before that deadly weapon they scattered. The next instant, he was running toward the shelter of the woods. Fred still lay gasping for breath, and, not knowing how badly he might have been hurt, his chums rushed to help him to his feet.

He was white and shaken, but had sustained no injury beside the temporary loss of breath. In a few minutes he was as good as ever. But by this time the tramp had made good his escape.

Presently Teddy came up with the constable and a careful search of the woods was made. But it was all to no purpose.

“Hard luck, old scout,” condoled Lester, “but that flying tackle of yours was a dandy.”

“That knee of his was better,” mourned Fred. “It knocked me out good and proper.”

“You threw an awful scare into him, anyway,” laughed Bill. “I’ll bet he’s running yet.”

“He can’t always get away with it,” prophesied Teddy. “That’s twice. The next time will be the third time and out.”

They got back to the school tired and vexed. But their thoughts were turned in another and a welcome direction by a tip given them by Slim Haley on their return.

“Big feed on,” he whispered. “Ned Wayland’s uncle sent him a ten-dollar gold piece for his birthday, and Ned has blown nearly all of it for a spread in the dormitory to-night.”

“Best news I’ve heard since Hector was a pup,” exulted Teddy.

“Ned’s the real goods,” said Fred. “I wish he had a birthday every month.”

It was hard for the occupants of Dormitory Number Three to keep their minds on their lessons during the study period that followed supper, and it was with a whoop and a bang that they rushed into their quarters, when the gong released them from further work that night.

“On with the dance, let joy be unrefined,” sang out Teddy, as he flung a pillow at Billy Burton.

“You mean unconfined,” corrected Billy.

“I mean just what I said,” replied Teddy. “I know the bunch of lowbrows I’m talking to.”

“Where have you stacked the eats, Ned?” asked Tom Eldridge, who, though his ankle was still weak, found his appetite as good as ever.

“In here,” replied Ned, throwing open his wardrobe door and displaying a host of things that made their mouths water.

“Wow, what a pile!” exclaimed Lester Lee.

“It won’t be a pile long, when you cormorants get at it,” said Tom.

“He counted them at break of day,

And when the sun set, where were they?”

he quoted.

“Officer, he’s in again,” said Melvin.

“It takes more than a sprained ankle to keep Tom off the poetry stuff,” laughed Fred. “Nothing less than an axe will do the business.”

“How did you get all this fodder up here?” asked Slim.

“I gave Jimmy, the laundryman, half a dollar for the use of his hand cart,” explained Ned, “and he sent his boy up with it, with directions to wait down on the other side of the gymnasium. Then I slipped out between supper time and study period, and smuggled them in without any one’s seeing me. The janitor nearly caught me, though. Big Sluper was just turning into the corridor as I got the last thing in and shut the wardrobe door.”

“We want to look out for Beansey, though,” he warned them. “He’s monitor this week, and you know how strict he is.”

“Beansey,” as the boys called him, because he came from Boston, was a monitor and assistant instructor. He was very lank and solemn, and extremely precise in his manner of speech. In the matter of discipline, he was almost as severe as Dr. Rally himself, and the boys sometimes referred to him as “Hardtack’s understudy.”

“Who cares for Beansey?” said the irrepressible Teddy. “If he comes, we’ll sic the cheese on him. It smells strong enough to down him. What kind is it, Ned? Brie, Roquefort, Limburger?”

“It is pretty strong,” admitted Ned. “When I ordered it from the grocer, he turned to one of his clerks and said: ‘Unchain Number Eight.’”

The laugh that followed was interrupted by a warning:

“Lay low. Here he comes now.”

“Beansey” came in with measured step and walked slowly through the dormitory. His sharp eyes took in everything, but there was nothing to awaken distrust, even in his suspicious soul. All the boys were busily engaged in getting ready for bed, and frequent yawns seemed to indicate that they would be only too glad to get there.

As the door closed behind him, there was a smothered chuckle of exultation.

“He won’t be round now for another hour,” said Tom, “and what we can do in an hour will be plenty.”

“You bet!” said Bill Garwood. “Just watch our smoke.”

They slipped the bolt on the door to avoid a sudden surprise. Then they dragged the clothing and mattress off one of the beds, and made a table of the springs. On this they piled, indiscriminately, the things brought from the wardrobe, gloating over the evidence of Ned’s generous provision for the “inner man.”

“Say!” exclaimed Fred, “why didn’t you clean out the whole store while you were about it?”

“Some feast,” commented Melvin. “Cheese and pickles and sardines, and pies and chocolates, and ginger ale and soda water, and cake and jelly, and grapes and – ”

“Shut up, Mel, and get busy, or you’ll get left,” said Slim, as he speared a bunch of sardines, an example which the rest needed no urging to follow.

The various good things disappeared like magic before the onslaught of ten hungry boys, and one would have thought, to see them eat, that they had just been rescued after days in an open boat without food or water. And not till the last crumb had disappeared did they lie back in all sorts of lazy attitudes, like so many young anacondas gorged to the limit.

“That old Roman, Lucullus, or whatever his name was, who used to give those feasts, didn’t have anything on you, Ned,” said Tom. “You’ve got him skinned to death.”

“Who’s all right, fellows?” asked Fred.

“Ned Wayland!” came the unanimous shout.

“And now,” said Melvin, “it’s up to Billy Burton to give us a song. Tune up, Billy.”

“Great Scott!” protested Billy, “haven’t you fellows any feelings at all? It’s cruelty to animals to ask me to sing after such a feed as that.”

But they persisted and Billy finally obliged with what the boys called a pathetic little ballad, entitled: “I Didn’t Raise My Dog to be a Sausage.”

It met with such approval that he gave as an encore: “Mother, Bring the Hammer, There’s a Fly on Baby’s Head.” This “went great,” as they say in vaudeville, but despite uproarious applause, the “Sweet Singer of the Wabash” declared that that was his limit for the night.

“A story from Slim!” cried Teddy, and, “A story! A story!” clamored the other boys.

“Ah, what’s the use,” said Slim, with a gloom that the twinkle in his eyes belied. “You wouldn’t believe it, anyway.”

“I would,” said Melvin solemnly. “Cross my heart and hope to die if I wouldn’t.”

“Well,” began Slim cautiously, “there was a fellow up in Maine once that was spending the winter with a pal of his, trapping in the woods. They were about twenty miles off from the nearest town, and every month or so one of them would have to go to town to lay in a stock of provisions.

“This was a good many years ago, and the wolves were very thick in this part of Maine up near the Canadian border. That winter had been colder than usual, and, as the ground was covered with snow, the wolves were unusually fierce and hungry.

“One day, this fellow I’m telling you about, hitched up his team to the sleigh and drove to town, as their stock was running pretty low. He was kept in town longer than he had expected, and it was late in the afternoon when he started back for his cabin in the woods.

“He had gone about half way, when he heard behind him the howl of a wolf. Then other wolves took it up, and, looking back, he saw some black specks that kept getting bigger and bigger. He whipped up his horses, and they did the best they could, because the wolves frightened them just as much as they did the driver. But they had traveled a good many miles that day, and the wolves kept getting nearer.

“The man had some flour and bacon and other things in the sleigh, and he kept throwing these out as he went along, hoping it would stop the wolves until he could reach his cabin. But he soon found that this was no go, and they’d surely get him, unless he tried something else.

“The only things left in the sleigh now were an empty hogshead, a cask of nails and a hatchet.

“By this time, he had reached a small lake that he had to cross. It was frozen solid, with ice several feet thick.

“By the time he had driven into the middle of this, the wolves were close behind and coming fast. He jumped out of the sleigh and cut the traces, so that the horses might have a chance to get away. Then he threw the nails and hatchet and empty hogshead out on the ice. He turned the hogshead upside down, crept in under and let it down over him. He hadn’t any more than done this, before the wolves were all around him.

“But he was safe enough for the time. He had the little cask of nails to sit on, and he was sure that he could hold the hogshead down so that they couldn’t overturn it.

“They came sniffing around and trying to stick their paws under, and suddenly that gave him an idea.”

Here Slim looked slyly out of the corner of his eye at his companions. They were listening breathlessly, hanging on every word.

“He took the hatchet,” Slim resumed, “and broke open the cask of nails. The next time a paw came under he drove a nail through it, fastening it to the ice. He did this to the next and the next, until there was a circle of paws under the hogshead. Then he chopped off the paws and the wolves limped away howling.

“Then he slid the hogshead along to a smooth place in the ice, and did the same thing all over again. There seemed to be no end of wolves, and he kept moving on from place to place till all his nails were used up.

“At last, he didn’t hear any more noise, and, lifting up the edge of the hogshead, he saw that it was morning, and all the wolves were gone. He got out, and made his way on foot to the cabin, where he found that the horses had got home safe, and his friend was just setting out to look for him. They went back together and counted the paws, and there were just – ”

He paused a moment.

“How many?” asked Billy Burton.

“Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-six,” said Slim impressively. Then, as the boys gasped, “seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-six,” he repeated firmly.

They rose to smite him.

“Of all the yarn spinners this side of kingdom come!” burst out Ned Wayland.

“There you go,” protested Slim plaintively, “you’re always pickin’ on me.

“It does seem quite a lot,” he admitted judicially, “but if it wasn’t true, why should they give those exact figures, seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-six? It shows they were conscientious and careful. Now, a liar might have said eight thousand and let it go at that. He might have – ”

Just then there came a knock at the door.